Imphal: To empower healthcare providers with skills necessary to relieve the suffering of patients with COVID-19 and their families, Pallium India in collaboration with Pallicovid Kerala, a collective of palliative care professionals has initiated a weekly online training in basic palliative care in Manipur.
Manipur has witnessed continuous growth in recovery rate in last few days. The Government has been creating awareness about wearing mask and maintaining social distance apart from spreading awareness about the importance of washing hands regularly and maintaining overall hygiene.
The National Health Mission, Manipur issued a directive for doctors, staff nurses, social workers, and paramedical staff to undergo this training and over 300 participants enrolled in the first week, says a press release.
Palliative care is the alleviation of serious illness related suffering of the patient and the family. It involves prevention, assessment and management of symptoms including pain, breathlessness and agitation and providing psychological, social and spiritual support.
To sustainably manage COVID 19, few palliative care experts in Kerala came together to form an informal task force (Pallicovid Kerala) to develop an e-book on guidelines for integration of palliative care with COVID-care.
Aimed at healthcare professionals in their tireless battle against the pandemic, the algorithm-based e-book derived from evidence-based guidelines and advisories from around the world helps enhance their existing skill sets.
Acknowledging the efforts of the Manipur Government, Dr. M R Rajagopal, Director, Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Sciences said, “I congratulate the Manipur Government in seeing the value of this training and encouraging the service providers to participate and learn how to be more compassionate and take informed decisions for treatment and self care as well.”
Dr. Rajagopal said, “This simple solution if adopted by all governments will immeasurably bolster our healthcare force for the current and future emergencies.”
Maibam Ranita Devi, Nurse, NHM, CHO, Health and Wellness Center, Awang Wabagai, Imphal said, “I’m very pleased and thankful to the ECHO online session being conducted by Pallium India and PalliCovid Kerala”.
Dr. Nepuni Athikho, Senior Consultant, Head, Family Medicine, Pain & Palliative Care, Christian Institute of Health Science and Research, Dimapur said, “Palliative Care on COVID-19 gave a very structured e-learning module and online teaching by experienced faculties in the field of palliative care.”
Dr. Athikho said, “The course which elaborates on the holistic aspects of care, both psychosocial-spiritual suffering of patients and family of COVID-19 infected patients was very helpful and practical.”
Dr. HM Iqbal Bahar, MD, Dip Palliative Medicine (UK), HoD (Palliative Medicine), Cachar Cancer Hospital, Silchar, said, “Amidst this pandemic, online learning sessions on ‘Palliative Care in COVID-19 patients’ are very rewarding. It made me realize that we can do so many things for mitigating the sufferings of these patients.”
Sessions are conducted on the ECHO platform and participants meet for five days, 1hr 15min daily to go through a lecture, case study and open discussions. This rapidly equips them to practice palliative care, relevant to meet the needs of the patient and their families who are going through suffering and anticipatory grief.
